An entertainment center is a  piece of furniture that creates a focal point for a room.  They contain shelves and drawers for storage. They showcase the television while hiding companion components such as cable boxes, DVD players, home theater systems, and speakers.  The entertainment center also displays books, photos, and artwork.  Often entertainment centers feature crown molding, glass or metal grid front doors, and background lights.

I want to thank Mark Czamara at DynaMark Customs in Tonawanda N.Y. for sharing photo of a recent entertainment center he sold and built with a SketchList 3D design.  It is a nice piece of work.

When designing an entertainment center wall unit you should consider and list the features you want in your entertainment center. Popular entertainment center features include:

• Adjustable height shelves
• Technology to allow remote controls to work.
• Some channels to hide cords/cables
• Media pull-out trays
• Media or multi-purpose drawers
• Sliding and or folding doors to hide the TV when not in use.

A step up from small floor-based TV stands, entertainment centers can be attractive furniture.  Built-in freestanding, they can segment or blend rooms and serve as a design statement. Think of it as an architectural focal point in your house.  NOTE:  Very young children climb furniture.  Children do die in furniture tip-over fatalities.  Attach your entertainment center to the wall to prevent tipping.

Be careful with your design.  Not every room will support a large wall unit. Entertainment centers don’t work well if you don’t have the right room configuration. They work best in living rooms that have a dedicated television wall.   Small or L-shaped rooms require more care in design.

Measuring is a critical step in building the appropriate unit.

First, consider placement. Study the wall on which the units are going.  Make a diagram of the area or room.  Specifically, make sure you locate and mark off doors, windows, doors,  heat and AC registers, baseboard heaters, or electrical.   Consider the location of the internet, television cable, and power outlets.

Don’t forget the viewers!  There are recommendations of screen size based on the distance of the viewers to the screen.  Those guidelines for viewing distances follow:

Viewing distance                                                        TV screen size

Three to four feet                                                        30 inches or less

Four to fie feet                                                            30 to 40 inches

Five to six feet                                                            forty-six inches

Beyond six feet                                                           Fifty inches or more

And remember that comfortable television viewing also requires the proper height of the television about the viewer’s line of sight.   The bottom edge of the screen should line up no less than a foot below the horizontal middle line of the screen.

“How do you know the design doesn’t dominate the room? “What you need to know what the right mass and scale of the entertainment center for that room are.  Try a bit of testing.

Create a model of the room and the cabinet.  A drawing might be best, but blocks can do.

Now, this video demonstrates how to create our entertainment center plan.

Part 1 – side Towers

The first video shows the sizes and relationships between the 3 assemblies in this project.

The full wall entertainment center consists of three towers – left, center, and right.

• Overall height is 75 inches, the height of the center tower.  The side towers are 65 inches.
• Sides are 30 inches wide, and the center is 64 inches.
• Width of the center is 19 inches and the sides 14.

This second video shows how to add doors and a crown molding.  There is a good explanation of the use of the resize function.

The project will create a beautiful set of diy entertainment center plans. Our first pass at this project will focus on creating the towers and their face frames and doors.  We will cover details such as moldings in a future posting and video.

The project size is 75 inches tall, 19 inches deep, and 124 inches wide.  Added room [2 ½ inches] accounts for the moldings on the front and sides of the assemblies.

Within assemblies, molding allowances are as follows.

• Left tower – 2 ½ inches on the left and front
• Right tower – 2 ½ inches on right and front
• Center tower – 2 ½ inches on sides and front.

The additional space required for the face frame means the front value of the sides and shelves is equal to ¾ inch.  The doors are inset.

The size of the middle entertainment center tower is determined by the:

1. Overhang for top moldings
2. Width of left and right stiles
3. Clearances on the sides of the TV
4. Width of the television.

Probably the television provides the main reason for making the entertainment center.  For a moment let’s think about that and how we can come up with the width of the center tower.

Many times the overall opening can’t change.  So, this means you need to work backward to determine the maximum size television that will fit.  You may not have too much flexibility with stile widths since they affect the appearance so much.  The size of the material determines the crown molding overhang.  If the television doesn’t exactly fit, you may try to cheat a bit on the side clearances.  Careful!  And if the overall width of the wall unit includes one or two side towers, those become the best places to adjust for the television size.  Making each side unit 2 inches narrower provides 4 inches of additional TV width.

The woodworker’s adage applies here.  Remember to measure [or think] twice and eliminate the return trip to the TV electronics store.

One final word on design.

Avoid creating too much open shelf display space.  To fill what may be unneeded or unwanted area, people begin to clutter.  They use the shelving to display objects they otherwise would not.  Keep things to the basics if you can.  Clean and minimal lines and designs work best.

Summary:

Four years ago, we ran a survey asking what people used SketchList 3D to design.   While the winner was kitchen cabinets, entertainment center plans finished a very close second.  And it does seem every home hobby user wanted a bigger flat screen tv and somewhere to put it.   From our Pro users, we found that their clients were more insistent on seeing 3D images of what they were buying.  Entertainment centers provide opportunities for a great deal of variation and design options.  Remember the saying goes – one picture is worth a thousand words.

The post Entertainment center wall unit design topics appeared first on SketchList3D.

A short time ago a new SketchList 3D user called in asking if there was a real quick video introduction on using our woodworking design software.  Well yes and no.  You might know that there are a few hundred videos on our site and more on YouTube.  But still there’s always room for more it seems.

Take a look at these four.

Using a library of standard cabinets to quickly ‘build’ a kitchen or entertainment room.

Built in woodworking functions.

What reports are available?

Make a simple case with a face frame.

Another thing — if you want to use and learn SketchList 3D I am here to help.  Every day I answer a handful of questions via email and do a few online Q&A type training sessions.  If you need to use woodworking design software in your business – don’t hesitate.  Get it going.  I promise I will help you make a success of it.

Thanks for your time – Dave

The post Woodworking Design Software – 4 Useful Videos appeared first on SketchList3D.

If you want to enhance your design and make it more realistic and meaningful to your prospect, you should use the import image feature in your custom woodworking software.  This article contains a link to a video which will show you how it’s done.

Try to get a straight on photo of whatever it is you want to import.  In this case the camera was not parallel to the back wall and the result is distorted a bit.  It still works though – and it’s probably light years ahead of your competition. Camera quality doesn’t matter that much.  The image above was captured with a cell phone.

The steps are as follows.

1. Make a new material for a board.
2. Select new texture for that material from you computer
3. Set the scale to equal the size of – in this case room – the image.  If it looks funny in your design you probably got the wrong size.
4. Enter the material sizes in the stock database – keep it thin.
5. Insert a board and pick the material from the list.
6. You may need to try different grain directions.
7. Then push this wall to the back of the design and add your own design over the top.
8. In the design above the cabinets were added to the sides and under the window.

The post Custom Woodwork Software Imports Photos appeared first on SketchList3D.

I am reading a book on dimensioned shop drawings and drafting practices for woodworkers using furniture design software.  A survey we did showed us that users place a very high value on shop drawings.

The book starts with an explanation of drawing by hand, transitions to using computer programs to generate two dimensional drawings, and then moves to how to create full three-dimensional images.

The author says  you began your 3D design effort by drawing a front side and top view in two dimensions and blend them together to create your  three-dimensional design. I’ve not done that so I don’t know if that’s right or not.

I have read articles and online comments and commentary that say that  two-dimensional design is simpler than three. Makes sense and I think I agree.

Then I thought since drawing in two dimensions is easier than drawing in three dimensions it might help new users of SketchList 3D understand the process if I put together a video creating a model using the two dimensional method.

In the video you’ll see that I use the side, top and front views to create a bookcase.

If you are a novice to SketchList 3D this video will help you understand some of the tools and processes  one goes through to create a three dimensional design using two dimension representations.

But the best thing to do is watch the video.

The post Furniture design software – 2 dimensions? appeared first on SketchList3D.

SketchList 3D has a new feature to make this kitchen design software even faster and more accurate – without keying in any numbers. Our latest release – due out this week – supports a powerful align tool. Using the align tool you pick the board [or object] you want to align to, hold down the shift key and mouse click on other boards [or objects] then click the align tool object.
You can align in three directions – left / right, bottom / top, and front / back. You can choose to align to the inside of a board [like butting boards] or to the outside of the boards. You can also align to the center of a board.

Again – click the ‘target board’, hold down the shift key and click one or more ‘moving boards’, and click the appropriate icon. Simple.

You can also combine align functions. Move a board so it butts against the edge of the target board, then click the centering icon so the moving board is also centered on the target.

You can also insert a temporary board, set it in place, and use it as a bit of a target or snap to line. When you are finished – delete the temporary board.

Make a quick book case? Insert the left side. Insert a shelf. Align the shelf to the inside of the side board. Red dot-drag the shelf to the proper side. Clone and space shelves. Clone the left side. Click one of the shelves. Hold down the shift key and click a side board. Click the align right – outside icon. Boom. How easy was that?

Watch this video…

Align is a very powerful and flexible tool. Think about the ways you can use it. Experiment and see what it can do for you.

The post Kitchen Cabinet Layout Software Designs Numbers-Free appeared first on SketchList3D.

A manufacturer wanted to see how SketchList 3D would work as case design software.

There is plenty of detail here, a review of all reports, and a good example of the kinds of information you get from SketchList 3D.  It applies to manufacturing, cabinet making, remodeling — anywhere you need to model, manage and produce your work.

The first step is to determine your output requirements, the first of which are the images.

The door would have a hinge allowing it to close against the back part of the box.  The two drawers would also ‘close’.  There is a round metal bar for hanging clothing and a set of heavy rubber casters on the bottom.

A large part of the quality of the image has to do with images available for use [like the handles], angle or view of objects, background color and light adjustments.

One report available in SketchList 3D is PDF output.  This exports the design to a file that Adobe PDF reader [free software available from Adobe] can open or your or your client’s computer and actually move the design around on the screen.

In addition to being able to examine all views of the design, the
users can change lighting, make a line drawing, and modify their view of it.  SketchList 3D users tell me they love this feature.  Remember they can rotate it with their mouse.

The PDF can give different looks.  And it’s free.

Other types of outputs include the following:

1. Shop drawings – this example shows a standard drawing. You can make as many drawings, as detailed as needed, as you want.

2. Parts List – any part of the design can be shown or not on the parts list. The list can be sorted many different ways.  You can specify – for example – only parts of a certain thickness to be shown on a reports list.  The parts list can be exported to a spreadsheet for more work – for example inventories.  Of course you can print it.

2. Optimize material layout diagrams. SketchList 3D will take all parts and lay them out on the specified materials in a way the reduces waste.
3. Purchase report.SketchList 3D takes the material requirements from the layout function, aggregates them, and produces a report showing how much of each type of material is needed and what that costs.  This example from the travel box is very simple.

5. Export to DXF files for use by your CAM software is generated from the layout function.

Consideration of the objects of each output is important.  Certainly drawings and reports go to the shop.  They will also be part of proposals to potential customers, input for estimating and quoting jobs, and web page and marketing materials.  Each use of output starts with the same information and perhaps presents it a bit differently.

The other desired output is a library of standard designs, components, and parts.  The travel box design incorporates wheels, handles, and corner material which can be saved as standards.

One early task in implementing SketchList 3D might be to create a list of the contents of the library.  Of course this can be done as you go along, but experience shows this can result in multiple parts which are really the same with different names.

Once a library of “boxes” is created, new projects can be a matter of taking an existing ‘box’ and changing its size.  This may be the entire process or you may make other types of modifications – such as adding drawers.

The output will definitely adjust as you gain experience with the software and the process.

Planning the setup steps is important.

Again this can be done as you progress, but some thought should occur front end.

When you start you will put some effort into determining the elements of your design.

1. Joinery types – what kinds of joinery do you use and where?
2. Materials – standard materials for all jobs and/or custom material for custom jobs?
3. Materials cost – entering what you pay for the materials and vendors.
4. Report contents – what data will be on the reports.
5. Customer setup – entering customer information and including it on report headers.

Thinking about design structures. 

The effective use of assemblies and sub-assemblies greatly enhances productivity.  This is a skill you will develop as you become more experienced with SketchList 3D.  For example, in the travel box I used one assembly and included in it a large door.  That might have been two assemblies – there are advantages to each approach.

Starting

There are several steps.  Once you purchase SketchList 3D you can begin training and setup.  We do remote training via the internet and telephone,

Many customers find they become very productive with only two training sessions.  In the first we cover basics and begin to design a project they are about to begin.  At the end of that session probably 80% of the work is finished.  The user will attempt to finish the other 20% on his or her own.  During this time, I answer questions via email, phone, of sometimes with an online computer connection.  The second session covers final questions, resolves problems or misunderstandings, and reviews report generation.

The two session approach works because in the case of a customer woodworker – there is really not that much complexity.  They know how they build, build more or less the same thing over and over, and usually do not use the entire set of features of SketchList 3D [at least at first].

Your situation may be like that or may be more complex.  The more detailed cutting of foam inserts, more complicated case interiors, different use of materials all can affect the time to learn and adjust.

SketchList 3D will provide you an easy to learn and use design tool that will enable you to create both custom and standard parts and products.  Your customers will love the images they will see before buying.  It is certainly easier to get sign off when you have a detailed picture of what they are paying for.

Creating a standard library of objects will help you quickly and accurately create new designs.

The parts list, purchase list, cutting diagram, shop drawings, and DXF files will help you manage your production.

The post Complete solution case design software appeared first on SketchList3D.

An email from a user follows.

“Can’t seem to edit the joinery on the back of gables. Suggestions?”

This is a great user of our free kitchen design software.  He communicated clearly.  I asked him to export and send me the project which he did promptly.  With it I was able to work with his ‘problem’ board and find the issue.

SketchList 3D sometimes has difficulty with overlapping holes.  In this case the rabbet and the dado on the board surface were being set to overlap.  Sometimes SketchList 3D predicts the problem and will not allow you to apply the rabbet, sometimes it issues a warning error.

The work around is to apply the rabbets to the edging before applying the dado.  Then when you specify the dado length make sure it does not overlap the rabbet.

Here is the warning.

I clicked the Edit /Clone Holes button and right clicked the row for Hole1.  Then I deleted it.  At that point SketchList 3D would accept rabbets on both the back and top of the board.

I clicked the Dado button after selecting the surface of the board that would receive the dado.

With some distance between the rabbet and the dado SketchList 3D is able to cut both on this board.

The same process applies to shaping and contouring board edges.  The rule is shape first and contour later.  For example if you want to make a triangle shaped table top, select the board at board detail level [double click it].  Next select a surface and click Shape.  Then delete one corner point to make the triangle.  Exit the shape tool and select an edge.  Click the contour button, select bull nose, and select the edges on which you want the contour.  Go to assembly level and see your board.

The post Kitchen Cabinet Design Software – Joinery appeared first on SketchList3D.

Kitchen Cabinet Design Software For fast design cabinet boxes.

Each week I train new users of SketchList 3-D.

I think a problem in these sessions  is that the “student” is anxious to get into the details – probably too quickly.  We create an assembly, insert a board and begin applying joinery, contours, drilling holes, and shaping that board as necessary. I understand that all of these details need to be included in the design.  But I think some idea of context would help understand what we are doing.   Take a look at the forest before carving a corbel from a tree…

I decided to put together a video creating cabinets– boxes really  – in a way of quickly creating more of a context for our work.
You are using kitchen and design software design cabinets for kitchens or maybe a wall unit for an entertainment center. Get started with some broad strokes to create size and locate the boxes that are going build.  These make up the foundation of your design.

It is really very easy to go back in and apply the details later. Because SketchList 3-D has the ability to clone, clone and space, clone and mere, or save objects as standards to be used over and over.  You can quickly apply the details everywhere needed in the design.

This video shows one way to do make quick boxes. Create an assembly and click as many of the different types of board (shelf, side, back) as you need. Then use the spreadsheet and name each board. At this point you can use the spreadsheet size and locate the boards, or you can use the blue dot and red dot techniques of sizing and locating objects.

At the end of the video I show the shop line, optimized layout diagrams, and partners/Cutlass reports that were generated as part of this design. Remember records are totally integrated and are created during the design process.

Watch the video and see if this isn’t a quicker way to get started. As always contact me directly if you have any questions, comments, or problems.

The post Kitchen Cabinet Design Software appeared first on SketchList3D.

Custom cabinet design software should be flexible enough to allow the creation of a cabinet beyond standard rectangular boxes.  A SketchList 3D Professional user sent in an email asking for some advice on how to make such a project.

The corner television unit was just part of a more complex wall unit his client wanted – but an important part.  He had figured out how to make the case but was puzzled a bit on how to best fit the face frame.  The task is to “cut” and fit the rails and stiles so they fit flush on the 45 cabinet front.  Actually because his cabinet had side of tdifferent legs the front was less than 45 degrees.  That’s not a problem because with SketchList 3D you can rotate objects in one degree increments.

We met online and worked on the design.  At first I suggested the front of the cabinet face forward and the back ‘legs’ would angle backward.  It sort of worked but sort of not.  After our meeting ended I tried putting the ‘legs’ of the box at 90 degrees – to the left and the back – and using a door as a container for the frame.  The door was made to the size to fit corner to corner of the ‘legs’.  I used the blue dot alignment method to line the door up in the corner and rotated the door back 45 degrees.  You’ll see in the video I made one key mistake that kept things from fitting together – but the fix wasn’t that bad.

Once I had the door sized and placed it was extremely easy to make a frame inside the door.  Two stiles and two rails later -perfection.

An option would be to have made the frame in another assembly, sizing it and rotating it as you would the door.  In this case you can merge assemblies in our cabinet design software so all boards are int he same container.  There are some small advantages when all the boards are in the same container.  But I’m not sure they are worth the effort.

Watch the video.  And please — subscribe to my YouTube channel for direct access.

I spent about 90 minutes online doing this design / training.  In the end the user had better knowledge of the tools and techniques of SketchList 3D.  Not only that but his project file was there as well.

So if you have a question or problem send me an email and we can work together to get you moving again.

The post Cabinet Design Software Works in the Corner appeared first on SketchList3D.

A drawer is a difficult thing to hand draw with any accuracy.  There is a fair amount of detail in a drawer.    At the very least it will take you a long time.

I receive a fair amount of questions about doing drawers in SketchList 3

In the very first version of SketchList I had an insert drawer function which worked quite well.  And as soon about the third user looked at it I heard the old refrain — “That’s not how I make my drawers!”  So I dropped the wizard knowing that it’s easier for you to make one drawer and save it as a standard to be used over and over again.

So this is the process.

1.  Insert a drawer into an assembly.
2.  Locate and size the drawer.  I remembered to have the drawer overlap the face frame by half inch to the left and right to account for the overlay front BUT I forgot the same half inch top and bottom.   In the video I added on a minute at the end to show how to make this fix retroactively.
3. Drag boards into drawer locating and sizing them as you go along.  The left and right side drawer boards are offset by half an inch for sliders.  Of course you use whatever size your hardware requires.
4. Mill the box parts which in this case means running a dado across the bottoms to fit in the bottom board.
5. Put a contour on the front panel board.
6. Insert a drawer pull from the standards library.
7. Save the new drawer as its own standard to be used again.

It seems that the whole process took about 10 minutes.  The one thing I would like to add is the ability to mirror front to back.  When I made up the left side I just cloned and mirrored it to the right.  I would be nice to do the same after cutting the front.  Of course I could have rotated a side by 90 degrees.  I try to stay away from rotating unless it is something other than a 90 degree step.

Here is the video.  Let me know if you have questions on the making of drawers in our free furniture design software.

Hint:  You can use the batch move function is SketchList 3D to move everything in the assembly back say 8 inches.  Make sure the project is deep enough first.  Then highlight the drawer and set its front to zero.  Presto – open drawer effect.

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